Plant Focus

A Gallery of Diverse Young Quercus chrysolepis Seedlings

By Dirk Giseburt | August 14, 2018

It is written in the entry for Quercus chrysolepis at www.efloras.org that “Quercus chrysolepis is one of the most variable North American oaks.” If this comment relates primarily to the mature plant and its characters, it’s also true of the youngest leaves in development. While the new, emergent leaves of the average young plant show primarily green, the outliers show a stunning variability in color and other features. The photos in this suite were taken in May 2018 of the first leaves in the second year of these plants’ lives. The acorns were collected in 2016 from seven seed sources at Palomar Mountain State Park in California that exhibit typical Q. chrysolepis characteristics, in the same general area where a population of Q. wislizeni with golden abaxial trichomes has been observed (California State Parks permits #CDD-2016-008-PMSP and #CDD-2017-018-PMSP).